Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action (published
in two volumes, 1984, 1987) is self-consciously styled as a successor to
Parsons’ 1937 classic, The Structure of Social Action.Like Parsons, Habermas reviews a “canon” of
classic theorists and presents his own theory of action, drawing together bits
of their work.The two significant
differences are that Habermas draws on a far larger canon than Parsons’ four
theorists.Habermas includes
sociologists (Weber, Durkheim, Mead, and Parsons), Marx and neo-Marxists (his
teachers such as T.W. Adorno), and a variety of philosophers and philosophical
psychologists.The other difference is
that for Habermas the core of any action is communication.The central problem of contemporary
societies is not how order is maintained (Parsons’ problem), but rather how to
create conditions for what Habermas calls “communicative action”.Understanding Habermas means understanding
what he means by communication, and why he places such emphasis on it.

Habermas’s problem may be stated this way.Like Parsons, he believes societies require
integration, but like the neo-Marxists he believes societies are in
crisis.As advanced capitalist
societies have developed, the core integrative function of communication has
been increasingly disabled (Habermas would say “colonized”).Thus the legitimation of social
institutions, indeed of nation states, is in crisis.By legitimation Habermas means citizens’ sense that the
institutions within which they live are just, benevolent, in their best
interest, and deserving of their support, loyalty, and adherence.Legitimacy is clearly linked to social
order, but there’s a shift of emphasis from Parsons’s problem of order.

Habermas’s theory is first about the conditions of
legitimacy crisis (how communicative action has become colonized, and how that
colonization undermines legitimacy).The second part of his theory attempts to describe the conditions that
would be adequate to the “ideal speech situation” that might restore
legitimacy.These notes are mostly
concerned with the first issue of colonization.In the discussion of the ideal speech situation Habermas is more
philosophical than sociological, though his work constantly blurs the boundary
between the two; for Habermas, each requires the other.

One biographical note.Habermas was a teenager during World War II, just too young to fight in
the German army but old enough to be appalled by Nazism and the revelations of
what the Holocaust involved.When he
speaks in interviews about his theoretical development, the key experience
seems to have been his teenage years during the post-war reconstruction, the
so-called “economic miracle” of West German economic recovery.What disturbed Habermas (who seems to have
been even more idealistic and sensitive to adult hypocrisy than most teenagers)
was how easily prominent Nazis gained their “de-Nazification” certificates,
went into business, recreated a system of economic inequality, and, in brief,
not a lot changed economically.Though
for all Habermas’s criticisms of German democracy, he has no illusions about
how much changed politically.

Despite his criticisms of capitalism, Habermas never seems
to have taken Marxism seriously as a political-economic alternative to
democratic capitalism.Rather he views
democratic capitalism as, in one of his famous phrases, an “unfinished
project.”Thus his work is
misunderstood when commentators like George Ritzer put him in the “neo-Marxist”
chapter.Habermas is trying to use
Marx’s insights (among many others) to bring about an ideal form of democratic
capitalism.He believes it is the role
of social theorists to provide what he calls “regulatory ideals” for society:
ideals of social forms to which society can aspire.His work is not utopian in a classic sense, but seems close to
what Anthony Giddens calls “utopian realism”.

A final introductory note.Habermas has led a movement in social theory that defends the tradition
of Enlightenment reason.It is the Enlightenment
project—liberal democracy in which the most reasonable argument holds sway—that
Habermas calls an “unfinished project of modernity”.He is vehement in his criticisms of other contemporary theorists
whom he sees abandoning the project of Enlightened reason.He shares with these theorists many
criticisms of society.Habermas is a
close, careful observer of what’s happening and extremely critical; most
recently, he’s critical of German attempts to deny, minimize, or justify the
Holocaust.BUT he still insists that
holding to the course set by the American and French Revolutions, as these
reflected the philosophies of Voltaire and Rousseau, Locke, and Kant, among
others.Participatory democracy based
on the rights of individuals and guided by reasoned discourse remains the best
hope for society.

The theoretical core of The Theory of Communicative
Action is Habermas’ revision of Parsons’s AGIL functional prerequisites in
order to describe the legitimation crisis of society, which Habermas calls the
“colonization of lifeworld by systems”.Recall that for Parsons, AGIL explains societal stability; the four
functions work together to achieve social equilibrium.Thus while Habermas has read Parsons as
carefully as any contemporary theorist, from Parsons’s perspective he turns the
theory on its head.Before Parsons’s
death he and Habermas had some legendary controversies at European sociology
meetings, mostly over what Weber believed about power.Parsons would consider Habermas’ revision of
his categories to be against his intentions, but theory is often created by
later theorists using earlier work against the intentions of the original
theorist.

Draw an AGIL diagram, with A in the upper right, progressing
counterclockwise.For Habermas, what is
generated is the “action context” for communication.The four cells divide on horizontal and vertical axes.A & L represent the “private sphere”,
and G & I the “public sphere”.Society requires certain boundaries between these spheres, but also
mutual interchange between them.Horizontally, G & A represent what Habermas calls systems of
material reproduction, or the reproduction context of society.I & L represent what he calls the
lifeworld, or the symbolic reproduction context of society.Now what does all this mean?

Habermas’ reinterpretation of AGIL contains a couple of
fundamental criticisms of Parsons.First, Parsons never takes as seriously as he should how the “societal
community” performs its own integration function.Habermas believes that Parsons’s discussion of integration, which
should be central to his theory, is underdeveloped theoretically.The reason for this is Parsons’s
unwillingness to recognize that integration is not proceeding as it should and
that society has a deepening legitimation crisis.Again, people’s sense of the legitimacy of fundamental
institutions (government, business) is in doubt.Habermas is employing the idea of legitimacy much the same way
Parsons talks about motivated compliance, as prerequisite to social order.

Habermas’s second criticism is that Parsons failed to
understand the nature of the generalized media that he identified with
each AGIL function.Fill in these
generalized media, as Parsons specified them:

·Adaptation depends on the generalized medium of money,

·Goal attainment depends on power (specified in votes),

·I is influence, and

·L is value-commitments.

Habermas makes a key observation about these media, and his
the whole theory depends on this: there is a fundamental difference
between two types of media.

·The A & G media, money and power (votes) are quantitative:
both money and votes can be counted, and whoever has the most wins.

·The I & L media, by contrast, are qualitative:
you can’t quantify influence or value-commitments, since these are only enacted
in communication between persons.

With this difference in mind, you can understand what colonization
means.In social settings that formerly
operated by communicative media (I & L), the quantitative media (A & G)
now dominate.Rather than communicative
action—people talking about their differences and coming to a common
understanding—one (person, party, or interest) dominates the other by having
more money or votes.Colonization
reduces the sphere in which communcative, qualitative media operate, and more
of social life depends on non-communicative, quantitative media.However—and this is key—the legitimacy of
the quantative media ultimately depends on the qualitative media: the value of
money and votes requires constant acts of influence and value-commitment, or
the A & G media become worthless.Money and votes are, after all, only worth as much as shared
understandings assert them to be worth.Money depends on mutual understandings that we will treat these pieces
of paper a certain way for purposes of exchange, and at times in history that
understanding has been withdrawn.Votes
are only worth as much as a common understanding that we will abide by the
final count; as they say in Canada on election night, “the people have spoken”.
Again that understanding can be
withdrawn, as in military coups.Crisis
in Habermas’ specialized sense occurs when those qualitative media (influence
and value-commitments) are too weak to generate the legitimacy of the
quantitative media.(I develop this
idea below, but read it over; it’s dense and important.)

Remember the key concern is legitimacy.Habermas agrees with Parsons about which
institutions are essential to the A & G functions.A is what Habermas calls the “official
economy”, and G is the “administrative state”.Both require legitimacy or else society falls into crisis.If people believe either that the economy
affords them no opportunity to compete and succeed, or that the state works
against their interest, crisis results.Habermas believes we have such a crisis, and it is deepening.The reason is that the quantitative media
(money and power) are non-communicative.What he means is that when money and votes are invoked, whoever has the
most wins and that’s it, end of process.There is no possibility of reaching a common understanding
through these media.And that’s what
Habermas means by communicative action: the process of reaching a common
understanding.This process is
on-going; understanding will never be final.So legitimacy requires that citizens understand each other as committed
to continuing the process of seeking common understanding, and acting with
respect for that on-going process.With
money and votes you never seek to reach understanding, you only invoke how much
(quantitative) you’ve got, and thus overpower or be overpowered.Money and votes can be useful ways of
getting things done, but only so long as their legitimacy is assured by the
common understandings of influence and value-commitments.

Habermas does not want to give up money and power, but the
legitimacy of their use depends on the qualitative media of influence and
value-commitments.Unless money and
power are understood as expressions of shared value-commitments and
interpersonal influence, they will not be legitimate and neither will
society.I & L, and they alone, can
generate the legitimacy of A & G.

A & G are examples of what Habermas calls systems,
his usage probably following Weber more than any other theorist.Systems are fully rationalized; George
Ritzer’s McDonaldization book is an excellent desciption of a fully
rationalized system.The principles of
rationalization—evident in McDonalds—are efficiency, calculability,
predictability, and control.The point
of such rationalization is to reduce the person to part of the “machinery” by
which the system does what it does; individual scope of action and decision are
minimized: “choices” are strictly limited.Ritzer points out how McDonalds “works” as a system by putting customers
to work: the customer becomes part of the assembly line, picking up food,
taking it to tables, clearing off the tables, etc.There is minimal possibility for customer and staff to talk to
each other, much less to reach any common understandings; no place for
“communicative action”.Staff have no
possibility of making decisions about how the restaurant will be run, and
customers are expected to move on at regular intervals (Ritzer points out that
seats are built so that people won’t sit too long).Everyone involved has to act as the system directs them.The quantitative system (so many “served
daily”, as quickly as possible, and what they are served is advertised for
size, not quality) colonizes any lifeworld communication.

I & L represent the lifeworld, a term that Habermas
adapts from Alfred Schutz.By the
lifeworld Habermas means the shared common understandings, including values,
that develop through face to face contacts over time in various social groups,
from families to communities.The
lifeworld carries all sorts of assumptions about who we are as people and what
we value about ourselves: what we believe, what shocks and offends us, what we
aspire to, what we desire, what we are willing to sacrifice to which ends, and
so forth.Most of these assumptions are
latent in Parsons’s sense of latency.Habermas writes that to make lifeworld assumptions fully reflective—to
speak of them explicitly—is already to destroy them.Their power is their “of course” or “taken for granted”
quality.Questions about the lifeworld—why
do you believe such-and-such? —can only be answered (if at all) by some version
of “because that’s who I am and who we are”.

To participate in a lifeworld (and the lifeworld is nothing
but mutual participation) is to share a common sense of who “we” are.Why do we have elections?To bring in new leaders, certainly, but also
because who we are, as Canadians, includes participating in democracy.If we returned exactly the same parliament,
member for member, the ritual of the election would still have value as an
expression of who we are as citizens.And the exercise of that “redundant” election could only be explained
(to the proverbial person from Mars) by reference to “who we are”.If you press people as to why they do the
things most central to their lives—enter and stay in marriages, become parents,
support family and friends during crises, engage in community service, work to
protect the environment, take offense at wrongs, laugh at jokes—their last,
best response usually comes down to “that’s who I am/we are”.

For Habermas the lifeworld has to be just there, furnishing
this sense of who we are and who we value being, but it also requires constant
reaffirmation (note a slight influence of Garfinkel’s idea of practical
accomplishment).When we perform the
parenthood, service, and so forth, we reaffirm to ourselves and each other who
we are and what we value.Value-commitments are reaffirmed, and the basis of influence is
reestablished.What crucial for
Habermas is that because the lifeworld consists of communicative action—people
reaching common understandings on everything from car pools to community action
to foreign policy.Communicative action
and it alone has the ability to regenerate influence and
value-commitments.The quantitative systems
media, money and votes, can express influence and value-commitments, but
they cannot generate these qualities—only the communicative action in
the life can do that.Thus—crucial
point—the legitimacy of the system depends on the lifeworld; it’s a one-way
direction of the lifeworld making possible the legitimacy of the system.

Now we return to two key terms: colonization and
de-coupling.The crisis of contemporary
modernity (what remains unfinished about modernity as a project) is that the
systems media (A & G) have become de-coupled from the lifeworld and
its media (I & L).The “societal
community” of I & L are increasingly colonized, in the sense that members
of the community have less sphere for communicative action.Their relationships are increasingly
mediated, locally, by money and power.McDonalds is one example; the contemporary university is another.In the university, department meetings
could, ideally, be a place where communicative action takes place and influence
and value-commitments are regenerated.We could, in those meetings, attempt to reach common
understandings.In one meeting we were
discussing a proposed change to the curriculum.I was trying to ask a colleague why s/he wanted this change; my
“communicative action” involved asking what s/he was trying to teach, how that
teaching was going, and so forth.The
colleague’s response was: “If you don’t like the change, vote against it.”In other words, s/he didn’t want to talk,
explain, or reach a common understanding.Instead we would each gather votes and whoever had the most votes would
win.Systems media (power, votes) had
pushed out lifeworld media (appeals to common value commitments as a basis of
influencing colleagues to believe one option or the other best represented who
we want to be, as a departmental community).It’s important to understand that this colleague acted in a milieu that
the university as a system creates: money and power dominate, and local
understands don’t count for much.The
colleague was part of this colonization process, but s/he was only reflecting a
larger process.

Habermas observes this same colonization process throughout
society.His primary example is
“juridification”.Communicative justice
depends on a shared sense of what’s right, given who we are and what we
believe.Within a lifeworld, judicial
decisions remind us of our value commitments.But this justice has become “colonized” by abstract principles of formal
law, and the judicial decision rests on appeal to these principles that did not
arise in the lifeworld.Thus in court,
law and legal procedure become de-coupled from any common sense (lifeworld)
conception of what’s just, fair, and right.Justice becomes juridification.Law as juridification becomes a system that colonizes the lifeworld.

Habermas’s other central example, evident in any newspaper,
is the transformation of the “citizen” into a “client” of the state.A citizen is one who, in John F. Kennedy’s
famous words, asks not what his/her country can do for him/her, but what s/he
can do for the country.Citizenship
depends as much on responsibilities as on rights.But in Canada and other capitalist democracies, politicians refer
to people less as citizens than as taxpayers.The taxpayer is a client of the state: s/he pays for services on a
quasi-contractual basis.When the
citizen becomes a taxpayer, responsibility drops out of the equation.The state becomes a more or less efficient
service provider, not a source of shared identity.To see this process at work, read any newspaper article about
health or education, or about national trade.Thus the Prime Minister styles himself as our top salesman, leading
“Team Canada” (in an interview in Poland, I heard Cretien say he was there only
to “sell Canada”).There’s nothing
wrong with Team Canada, we need sales (the A function), but when the value
commitments that make people Canadian citizens are not being regenerated at the
same time, then sales colonize citizenship and crisis results.

Habermas believes this colonization of lifeworld by system
is a crisis, because the system media (money and power) have no legitimacy
except that which the lifeworld furnishes.I can’t repeat too often Habermas’s central premise: only at the lifeworld
level, in its media, can legitimacy be regenerated.The systems media are always parasitic on the lifeworld.The crisis is that the parasites are
destroying their host: that’s what colonization is.The more the systems media colonize the lifeworld, the more they
lose legitimacy and crisis ensues.Material reproduction (system level) is crucial for society, but when it
destroys symbolic reproduction (lifeworld level); it undercuts itself.

A final note.Notice
how Habermas is updating Durkheim’s notion of anomie, employing Weber’s rationalization,
redefining the conditions of Marx’s alienation, and invoking Mead’s community
of generalized others.It’s an
incredible work of theoretical synthesis.I also find Habermas’s theory empirically compelling.In my own study of medicine, the lifeworld
relationships of patients and those who care for them—doctors and nurses—are
increasingly colonized by the demands of third-party payers, whether these are
insurance companies in the U.S. or government in the Commonwealth countries I
live in and visit.The legitimacy of
medicine is in crisis: the popularity of “complementary” practitioners is one
indication of this, and the prevalence of malpractice suits in the U.S. is
another.The discontent I hear
constantly in medical groups and illness support groups is loud and clear—and
yet medicine becomes more exclusively a “system” that excludes lifeworld
communicative action.Such action would
mean patients and their families spending time talking to professionals in
order to reach a common understanding of what’s best given available resources
and present circumstances.When such
talk is excluded and patients are simply told what medicine will offer, take it
or leave it, medicine creates the conditions for its legitimacy crisis to
deepen.

Habermas’s theory has been criticized on several basis, but
for now let me leave you thinking about how much it is able to explain.I believe the basic idea of colonization is
one of the singular contributions of contemporary theory.